CPAC: Liveblogging Bolton

Bolton is on. Welcomed by enormous applause. Expressing reservations over some of McCain's positions and hoping McCain will have a change of heart over his remarks on the international court.

But Bolton tells us McCain strongly lobbied for Bolton's nominations

Lenin said "Worse is better"  "Not a position the conservatives should take especially  at a time when our country is at war. WORSE IS NOT BETTER"

"We cannot have a President  that needs on-the-job training or one that has problems dealing with a little bit of stress".

"I'll be supporting John McCain in this election and I hope you will be as well"

UPDATE: Video hat tip Allah

Bolton thinks McCain took a stronger position yesterday regarding Iran were than Bush.

"Iran is now freer to pursue nuclear weapons than ever before".

Correcting the CIA - February 7, 2008

On December 3, when the director of national intelligence released an estimate of Iran's nuclear program that said the Mullahs had suspended its bomb making in 2003, the left could barely contain its glee. The New York Times featured a front page analysis that said, "Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate here." The Majority Leader, Senator Reid took the opportunity of its release to call again for a "surge of diplomacy with Iran." Senator Obama said, "The juxtaposition of this NIE with the president's suggestion of World War III serves as an important reminder of what we learned with the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq: members of Congress must carefully read the intelligence before giving the President any justification to use military force."

Careful, indeed. It turns out that on Tuesday, as our Eli Lake reported on page one of yesterday's Sun, the director of national intelligence, Mr. McConnell says he now regrets the phrasing of the unclassified estimate that so stirred America's enthusiasts of diplomacy. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Mr. McConnell went further. He noted that Iran is developing both the long range ballistic missiles and the nuclear fuel for a potential weapon. What had halted, it turns out, was work to design the actual warhead and secret enrichment activity. The Iranians continued to enrich uranium in the open in Natanz in defiance of two Security Council resolutions.

As for the secret enrichment and weapons design, Mr. McConnell is not even sure as of mid-2007 whether the Iranians have restarted this work. "We assess with moderate confidence that Tehran had not restarted these activities as of mid-2007, but since they comprised an unannounced secret effort which Iran attempted to hide, we do not know if these activities have been restarted," he told the assembled senators. So why then did the opening sentence of the December 3 assessment state with no equivocation, "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program"? Mr. McConnell said that it was because he had to assemble quickly a declassified estimate in late November and that it did not occur to him that this kind of declarative statement would confuse the issue.

For the unelected intelligence bureaucrats who pushed through December's distortion and the newspapers that cheered them on, the walk back from the director is a serious blow. It's hard to recall a situation quite like it. Only a few lines about Mr. McConnell's testimony on this point appeared in yesterday's New York Times, and that was buried in a story that focused on the improvements Al Qaeda has been making in its ability to strike the home front. Yet for a brief moment the unclassified assessment about which Mr. McConnell now has regrets ended political debate about the urgency of stopping the world's leading sponsor of Islamic terror from obtaining an apocalyptic arsenal.

UPDATE: Iran starts up advanced centrifuges hat tip Larwyn 

Comments

[Mack the Nice]

Bolton is right on the money. Fortunately for the spoiled brat egos of some of these lock-step, knee-jerk McCain haters out here, he didn't put the hammer down on their reflexes quite so hard as he might, by pointing out a matter that is still entirely being missed by all these talking (Ditto) heads, and that is this . . .

Where do these people get off with all this yack-yack about how McCain is "not popular with the conservatives in the party"? What in the big fat steaming humps of elephant doo-doo do they think they're talking about?! The people voting Republican have spoken by nominating McCain! They have made their approval of McCain's conservative credentials resoundingly clear at the polls on Super Tuesday!!!!

So who are these other people, these few booing, hissing loudmouths who think that if they can shriek their hatred loud enough they might come off sounding like the majority of Republican voters? Who the devil are they? Eh?

Could some of these Republican Rush Robots just try getting a mind of their own for once? Yeah! Like all these free-thinking Independents who voted for McCain, for instance? Uh huh--and why do you suppose they are *independent*? What do you think it means to be "independent"?

I'll tellya: Nothing other than an independence of thought is what stands at the very foundation of conservatism, rightly so-called. Every person who is an independent is a leader, not a follower--exactly the kind of person equipped to go into business for himself, or rise to the rank of an officer in the military. And what's more? the ranks of independents and libertarians are growing greater all the time because as they are the truest of conservatives, as former Republicans (many of them) they've had it, don't ya see? They're fed up totally with the anti-conservative action of this current Republican administration and its backers of America-selling, China trading, illegal immigrant hiring agri-business/mercantile complex which is screwing America in every direction, whether from south of the border or all across the Pacific from Peking.

Who are these so-called "conservatives" standing around in sulfurous clouds of pachyderm flatulence with their shrieking and snarling of all this McCain slander of theirs--when a majority of voting conservatives are demonstrating the exact opposite by nominating McCain?

Who they trying to kid? Eh?

I'm asking you! Who the devil are these people out there flattering themselves to say they are the "conservatives" if its the people voting Republican who put McCain on top? I'll tell you all about it, right here--and it won't be pretty . . .

http://whosenose.blogspot.com/

[duncan]

Wow Mack the Nice....
I sure don't agree with everything you say, but damn you are right on the money when you call out these jackasses at CPAC for not thinking independently. In addition to CPAC, this site serves as a clear example of of the radical right's kool aid drinking. You will never find an original thought on this site or any other right wing site. No evidence of critical thinking.
Indeed, the electorate did vote for McCain. So Rush, Ann, Steyn, Malkin and Pammy...take that as a poke in the eye. Even those you claim to speak for...conservative Americans...don't buy your horseshit.

[Mack the Nice]

Hey Duncan--

When you say we don't agree on everything, on that we couldn't agree more. And I like it when I can agree with someone about something, if only that at least once in a while!

But as to any friendly quarrel I may have with Rush, Ann, Steyn, Malkin and Pammy, as you name them is not so much with them as with their followers--they are independent minded people and leaders each one. Without the like--or shall we say the 'lights'--of Pam, Michelle, Ann, Brigitte and Camille my hope in the female half of the human race would have darkened to black and blue long ago.

As to Mark Steyn, I heard nothing in Pam's current video on him that I couldn't affirm 100%--even his comments on McCain seemed sporting and not polluted with vitriol.

Both Coulter and Rush--much as I can agree with many of their views--do get off on a tangent that sometimes puts them in territory far too agreeable to a reactionary skinhead mentality, but no one should confuse or identify either of them with some of their brainless and bigoted followers.

So far as what you say about Atlas, I couldn't agree to disagree more forcefully than to say that though I will not fall to the cliché of calling this blog "da bomb" I will dub it "The Blintz" of all blogs, and totally for my famished taste, the Cheese Blitz, that this cyber-burg has a long time had coming right in the eye, with the sauce--and not to the exclusion of the sour cream. I love it!
--
Mackie http://whosenose.blogspot.com/

[Mack the Nice]

Hey Duncan--

When you say we don't agree on everything, on that we couldn't agree more. And I like it when I can agree with someone about something, at least once in a while.

But as to any friendly quarrel I may have with "Rush, Ann, Steyn, Malkin and Pammy," as you name them is not so much with them as with their followers--they are independent minded people and leaders each one. Without the like--or shall we say the 'lights'--of Pam, Michelle, Ann, Brigitte and Camille my hope in the female half of the human race would have darkened to black and blue long ago.

As to Mark Steyn, I heard nothing in Pam's current video on him that I couldn't affirm 100%--even his comments on McCain seemed sporting and not polluted with vitriol.

Both Coulter and Rush--much as I can agree with many of their views--do get off on a tangent that sometimes puts them in territory far too agreeable to a reactionary skinhead mentality, but no one should confuse or identify either of them with some of their brainless and bigoted followers.

So far as what you say about Atlas, I couldn't agree to disagree more forcefully than to say that though I will not fall to the cliché of calling this blog "da bomb" I will dub it "The Blintz" of all blogs, and totally for my famished taste, the Cheese Blitz, that this cyber-burg has a long time had coming right in the eye, with the sauce--and not to the exclusion of the sour cream. I love it!
--
Mackie http://whosenose.blogspot.com/